Jesus didn't give us a message
- Jesus was the message
dabmin.org
"I have three things I'd like to say today.
First,
while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of
starvation or diseases related to malnutrition.
Second,
most of you
don't give a shit.
Third,
what's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I
said 'shit' than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night." Tony Campolo
"Legalism is the theology of "Jesus +".
Legalists don't dismiss Christ. They trust in Christ a lot.
But they don't trust in Christ alone."
"Legalism is joyless because legalism is endless. There is
always another class to attend, person to teach, mouth to
feed."
"Inmates incarcerated in self salvation find work but never
joy.
How could they? They never know when they are finished."
Max Lucado
"It's not about me"
Pgs 100-104
Imitation?
or
Discipleship?
As difficult as
they sometimes
are to distinguish,
you can't have both.
DAB
"Lord I want you to help me with my problems, but I want to
keep my pigs"
Dr. Gene Scott
"When we
dig a bit into that word believe in the usage of common life it means three
distinct things, each leading straight into the other -- knowledge, belief,
trust. That is, facts, facts accepted, facts trusted in regard to something
that takes hold of your life. You hear something. You believe it's true. But
there must be the third thing, risking something valuable. There's no belief
in the heart-meaning without this thing of risking. The trust that risks is
the life blood of faith. The rest is only the bony skeleton with tendons and
sinews and flesh. There's no life without the blood. There's no belief
without trust. "
From
Quiet
Talks on John's Gospel
by S.D.
Gordon.
by paul washer
This message was
delivered to The Revival
Conference in Atlanta
Georgia, on Wednesday,
October 22nd, 2008.
There was a stunned
silence for 20 minutes
after the message was
delivered.
In short; It does little
good for men to cry out
for extra-Biblical
manifestations, when
Biblical principles are
violated.
There is little reason
for the devil and evil
men to oppose a man
praying for revival
unless he is also
laboring for
reformation.
Yes, it starts off a
little slow, but trust
me, it builds. I have
cleaned up the audio a
little, and it (audio
only) can be
found here.
Some
of us learnt in school
biology classes, to
dissect frogs. But the
frog always died.
Dissection carries that
risk.
Theology is the science
of dissecting God in
order to understand Him
better. It has it's
benefits, but
'understanding' God
better rarely fed or
warmed anyone.
American preacher Henry
Ward Beecher once said,
"Theology
is only our
ideas of
truth,
classified
and
arranged." On another
occasion he said,
"Theology
is a
science of
mind,
applied to
God."
Humans can study each
other all they like,
putting themselves and
others in well arranged
little boxes, but until
they engage each other,
nothing really
interesting happens.
God's no different. We
can study Him all we
want, but until we
engage Him, nothing
really interesting
happens.
If our Theology places
rules above relationship
then it is bad theology.
The story goes that a visitor to the Australian outback
commented on the fact that the cattle stations (ranches) had
no fences. The grazier (rancher) responded,
"You don't need fences when you have wells!"
How well this illustrates the 'law of the spirit of life in
Christ Jesus' in regard to our relationships.
(Shamelessly stolen from David Orton at
www.lifemessenger.org)
In a
world where Christian brothers and sisters are being
martyred by the thousands, possibly at a greater rate than ever before in recorded history,
Western Christians pursue their
edifice complex, building more and greater churches as
monuments to our opaque stupidity, to house the mental
midgets we have produced by the invincible ignorance to
which we have molded them by our denominational dogmas. We cheer
our dogma dictocrats in
our own unique liturgical language as we battle each other from
our creedal trenches, blamestorming, while the world goes
blithely on,
and those who aren't directly involved in the battle for belief are
usually still suffering the symptoms of orthodoxy overload.
Think I
am overstating it? Consider this. Jesus really didn't leave
us a long list of rules, but amongst them were two that
stood out. (1) love one another, and (2) teach others what I
have taught you.
So how's
that working out for us? From all the different
denominations in the USA that we use to celebrate our
differences as compared with loving one another, less than
$1 out of every $1,000 collected goes to evangelize the over
800 ethnic groups in the world who may well know the logo
for Coca Cola, but still have never even heard the name of
Jesus Christ.
Disciple?
Yes!
Christian? Maybe not in the common sense.
Can you imagine Renoir learning to paint by numbers?
You have probably seen
the kind of books where the picture is all laid out on the page and
all you need to do is to fill in the numbered spaces with the color
corresponding to the number you find there. Relationship with the
Universal Spirit is to authentic spirituality, what painting by
numbers is to religion.
Karl Marx said,
"religion is the opiate of the people" and proceeded to teach a new
religion to attempt to bring communism to a great many people.
Just
another religion, and less durable than most.
Rules and self
perpetuating, dictocratic leadership, replace love of country and
fellow man.
When
religion replaces relationship, the Church (a people)
becomes a church (the building). The man on the cross is
replaced by the symbol of the cross. Relationship is
replaced by rules, and suddenly we are all painting by
numbers.
Jesus
said, "I no longer call you servants, but now I call you
friends".
Beyond
religion lies relationship which once savored, defies
religion to ever compete.
Jesus
didn't say, "Come and be religious. He said, "Come unto me".
I'LL SEE YOUR
VERSE AND RAISE YOU A CHAPTER
Verse victims, and chapter chumps.
Do you
know people whose lives have been spent in unnecessary guilt,
spiritual abuse, stunted growth and as a stranger to God's
grace, because they were held hostage to
Bible Bandits, God Wallopers and Dogma Dictocrats.
This is a distinct characteristic of religion. Possibly
the saddest part of this is that those who teach by proof
texting (a verse here and a verse there, usually drawn out of
context), are mostly
sincere. But no matter how many people repeat a lie, it
still doesn't become the truth.
If you have
heard a religious teacher refer to any of the following you have been listening to twisted
scripture.
And before
you wish to become righteously indignant, you might want to
consider the evidence provided.
We all know
the one about money being the root of all evil, but how
about:-
And I,
if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.
(Jesus speaking in John 12:32). It doesn't exist without
inserting extra unrelated words into the original text).
How about:- "God inhabits the praises of His people"?
(Nowhere in any
Bible, any version!)
or... Grace is
unmerited favor.
If grace is
unmerited favor,
then why do only the humble get it? 1 Peter 5:5.
How about
"make Jesus the Lord of your life"? Not mentioned even once.
Ever
heard of the 'sinners prayer'? Not in the Bible!
No, Really!.
Or how
about "You will know people by their fruits"? Oh really? Was
that actually referring to all Christians? Or is it, in
context, referring to those who consider themselves
prophets?
The list goes on for as long as we permit religion to lead us by the nose.
MY KARMA JUST RAN OVER YOUR
DOGMA
When certain cells in the body attack other cells in the
body, we call it cancer.
But when certain cells in the Body of Christ attack other
cells in the Body of Christ we call it "defending the
faith".
Jesus said "This is My commandment, that you love one
another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than
this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. You are
My friends if you do whatever I command you". (Joh 15:12-14)
For 2 millennia, the Devil has seen to it that Christians
destroy each other with religious racism from their creedal
trenches. John
Calvin sneered
as he burnt his
theologically different, fellow protestant, Michael Servetus
at the stake for holding to a disagreeable theology.
That's the same
Michael Servetus who
discovered the cardiovascular pulmonary system, the benefits
of which were delayed due to the burning along with Servitus
of as many of his books as the Church could find. Calvin thought it proper to arrest him after
recognizing him attending church, and presumably out of
Christian charity, had the
execution
stake piled with green wood so that Servitus took fully 30
minutes to die. Some Christians haven't changed much
More protestants were martyred over adult baptism alone, by
other protestants, than by the whole Spanish
Inquisition.
Larry Norman said, "The Beatles sang "All you
need is love" and then they broke up."
But the Bible says,
"But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him."
(1Co 6:17)
The man said it right when he said that religion is the
opiate of the people. Jesus didn't say, "Come and be
religious. He said, "Come unto me".
Ritual and performance is man's way of reaching God.
Relationship built around a person (Jesus Christ) is God's
way of reaching man.
with multiple
versions, dictionaries, commentaries,
and available in just about
any language you can imagine.
“The frustrating thing is that those
who are attacking religion claim
they are doing it in the name of
tolerance. Question: Isn’t the real
truth that they are intolerant of
religion?” - Ronald Reagan,
August 23, 1984
"Saints are a group of
displaced persons, uprooted from their natural home, and on their way to an
extraterrestrial destination, not of this planet, neither in its roots or in
its ideals."